Nintendo this morning revealed the launch date for a new program to share YouTube ad revenue with content creators called the Nintendo Creators Program. The new revenue-sharing scheme officially launches on May 27 but a beta of the program is available now.

Those interested can sign up to get 60 percent of the advertising revenue from a video containing "Nintendo intellectual property" such as a Let's Play of a Wii U game. "Partners" can also designate entire channels to Nintendo content - which will net them 70 percent of the ad revenue.

Nintendo says that it will no longer sell games and game systems in Brazil because the tariffs on this sector are just too high. While Nintendo says the departure from the market is temporary, the company did not indicate if and when it would return. In an interview with UOL Games, Bill Van Zyll, Nintendo of America's director and general manager for Latin America, said the following:

Nintendo announced that it has won an appeal at the International Trade Commission related to patent infringement claims made by Creative Kingdoms. The company alleged that Nintendo's Wii and Wii U systems violated several of its patents. an earlier ruling by the ITC side with Nintendo, but the company appealed that decision. This week the ITC reaffirmed its earlier decision, noting that Creative Kingdoms’ patents are invalid and should not have been issued because Creative Kingdoms tried to claim more than the company invented.

Nintendo and Philips have come to an agreement that pretty much settles a patent infringement case between the two companies filed earlier this year. Philips claimed that, prior to suing Nintendo, it attempted to set up licensing deals for the patents it believed the company was infringing on.. since 2011. Nintendo mostly ignored the company's inquiries (according to Philips' characterization of the situation), causing Philips to sue Nintendo and seek a ban of the company's allegedly infringing products in the U.S.

A new report from research firm GfK indicates that, while videogame systems are still the most common hardware used for watching Netflix on a TV screen , they are being used much less than they were three years ago. The report, "Over-the-Top TV 2014," also indicated a growing number of US households are relying more and more on dedicated set-top/plug-in devices to watch Netflix on a TV set.

A new study finds that MS patients who used the Wii Balance Board five days a week to play dance and snowboarding games had better balance. According to the lead author of the study Dr. Luca Prosperini (a neurologist at Sapienza University in Rome, Italy), this type of therapy is useful because there are no drugs on the market that restore or improve balance for those suffering from the disease.

Our favorite photogenic contributor Andrew Eisen offers a new video delving into Nintendo's most recent financial results. Not only is it a lot of fun to watch, you might learn a thing or two about where Nintendo is and where it expects to be by the end of its current Fiscal Year.

There's also some talk about the next Fatal Frame game, and the Wii U version of Watch Dogs, and Andrew highlights the fact that America is Nintendo's top market. See, Nintendo, America still loves you!

Nintendo UK says that it will appeal a decision by a UK High Court judge who ruled last week that the Wii and Wii U violate several patents held by Philips. High Court judge Colin Birss said Nintendo infringed two Philips patents in a ruling last week related to the sensor and camera used in the Wii and Wii U. The judge said that Nintendo did not violate a third patent related to modeling a body in a virtual environment.

The High Court of the United Kingdom has ruled that Nintendo's Wii console system infringes on two of Philips' patents, Bloomberg reports. Judge Colin Birss said Nintendo infringed two Philips patents in a ruling today related to the sensor and camera used in the Wii. The judge said that Nintendo did not violate a third patent related to modeling a body in a virtual environment.

Sony claims that nearly a third of current PlayStation 4 owners owned a Wii or an Xbox 360. Around 31 percent of consumers who bought a PlayStation 4 had an Xbox 360 or Wii but not a PS3 in the last hardware generation, PlayStation's American VP of marketing John Koller told Kotaku in an interview conducted at E3.

The data Koller was citing comes from a new research study - the origins of which are not revealed. Koller also said that as nearly 17 percent of people who have bought a PS4 didn't own a console at all in the previous generation.

A new report from the Natural Resource Defense Council concludes that the newest generation of game consoles consumer way too much power. The report notes that these new systems are on track to consume as much power nationwide as all the homes in Houston this year. That equates to about $1 billion to operate these systems annually.

Much of this energy is consumed in "the middle of the night, when the console is in standby mode but still listening for voice commands or using higher power than necessary to keep USB ports active."

Electronics manufacturer Philips claims that the Wii U infringes several of the company's patents and is seeking to have the system banned from being sold in the United States. Philips claims that Nintendo copied technologies that replicate a "user's real-life actions in-game" and that it uses a patent related to "user interfaces designed to be navigated by a pointing device" (such as a Wii Remote).

Nintendo announced today that it will eliminate some Wi-Fi Connection services worldwide in a few months. Certain online services across the Nintendo DS, DSi and Wii consoles will no longer be available after May 20, including online play, leaderboards and matchmaking. The shutdown is set to take place on May 20, and will affect all regions.

On Friday Nintendo projected that it would take a $240 million net loss for the fiscal year ending in March on weak holiday sales of its Wii U console and related software, and scaled back its sales projections for its home console and its 3DS hand-held. This morning the company is seeing the effects of that news in its stock price, according to this BBC report.

Nintendo has acquired the patents of IA Labs following a legal victory in court over the company related to patents - but the company secured them outside a courtroom, sort of. Nintendo announced that it secured the patents officially on January 7, during a sheriff's sale in Montgomery County, Maryland. The company sued Nintendo in 2010, claiming that it violated several of its patents in Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus. Nintendo successfully defended against the lawsuit and obtained judgment in its favor in February 2012.

Nintendo has apologized for outages over the Christmas holiday period on its eShop. The company said that these outages were mostly due to high volumes of traffic. As a result of these problems Nintendo also said that it was forced to delay the Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter apps, which were originally due to go live on December 27.

MMO company Perfect World Entertainment is making a major push into the free-to-play market on video game consoles. The company announced that it has completed a company expansion by creating a console division targeting current and next-gen consoles. Planned console products expected include current and future games from Perfect World Entertainment’s suite of developers, the company said.

Nintendo announced that Pokémon X and Y have sold over 2.35 million units to-date and that Wii U sales are up 340 percent month-over-month. The company also said that the 3DS sold nearly 770,000 units during the month of November, putting its lifetime total at nearly 10.5 million.

As the supposed console war kicks off, it looks like Sony has a slight edge over Microsoft. According to data released by retail research firm NPD Group, the PS4 edged out the Xbox One in sales, but Microsoft says it won a battle on a different front during the launch window for the next-gen consoles. More PS4 software was sold as well during the period, but more sales of PS4 consoles and software makes sense given that the system went on sale a week before the Xbox One did in North America.

Microsoft fared considerably better than Sony on Black Friday, according to data analysts InfoScout. The firm claims that Xbox One was the highest selling console during the period, comprising 31 percent of total hardware sales. The Xbox 360 also fared pretty well, grabbing a 30 percent share resulting in a joint Microsoft lead of 60 percent. Joint sales of the PS3 and PS4 amounted to 30 percent share in sales total, while sales of the Wii U and Wii combined was 7 percent.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata admitted in a briefing for investors and analysts this week that the Wii U has - so far - failed as a worthy successor to the Wii. The Wii is currently outselling the Wii U, which has only managed to sell 3.9 million units to-date worldwide. Speaking during a briefing about its second quarter financial results, Iwata noted that the Wii U has only done one thing right - backwards compatibility with the Wii.

Nintendo says that it sold 460,000 Wii U units worldwide in the six month period that ended on September 30. The figure was revealed as part of the company's financial results for the last three months. In this quarter the company only sold 300,000, despite knocking $50 off the price tag of the system a few months ago. The company also had a number of high profile releases to go alongside that price cut including Pikmin 3 and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD.

As part of its release of financial results for the second fiscal quarter, Electronic Arts revealed that the Wii and Wii U account for a little over one percent of the company's total sales, while PC game sales are its top segment. EA said that Wii and Wii U games accounted for 1.3 percent of EA's software revenues in the last fiscal quarter. Of the $695 million in revenue earned from combined sales of console, mobile and PC software, about $9 million came from Wii and Wii U software.

Though Nintendo recently said that the Wii production halt was only aimed at Japan, it turns out that the original Wii will no longer be produced for European markets either. Instead Nintendo UK says that consumers who don't own a Wii and want one can still buy the Wii Mini - a SKU offering a lower price-point at the cost of a number of missing features (only disc-based Wii games can be played and backwards compatibility and downloadable titles are not supported).

Nintendo of Japan has confirmed via its official web site - as translated by Kotaku - that it has halted production of its last-generation Wii console for Japan. The company said earlier in the month that it would halt production of the console for the region "soon," and the latest update to the site confirms that that time is now.

In a recent conversation with Benzinga IHS senior games analyst Christine Arrington said that Nintendo's Wii U console continues to suffer from a general messaging problem about its brand and continues to confuse consumers. Arrington says that the system still suffers from the same messaging problem it did when it launched nearly a year ago.

Nintendo revealed that it is finally winding down production of its popular Wii console in Japan. Last year the company said that it had stopped making games for the platform. Speaking to Eurogamer, a Nintendo of Europe representative noted that the company's Japanese parent company will stop making new Wii systems in the near future.

According to GoNintendo, Nintendo has sold an impressive 654.12 million consoles and hand-helds worldwide over the last 30 years. On the home console front, Nintendo has sold 268.97 million systems - from collective sales of the NES (Famicom), SNES (Super Famicom), N64, GameCube, Wii, and Wii U. The rest of the number is made up of hand-held device sales. Nintendo has sold 385.15 million hand-helds to-date. That number comes from cumulative sales of the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, DS, and 3DS.

A new research report from ABI Research claims that new technologies like cloud-based streaming will not be a game changer for new consoles coming out this fall. In fact the research firm predicts that new console numbers will not be on par with the previous generation's retail sales number in the first five years. ABI Research says that the push to "market online video access in the new consoles is undermined by the availability of cheaper streaming devices from Roku, Netgear, WD, Apple and Seagate, among others."

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ZippyDSMlee: .....win8 hates any left over hidden install partitions from other version of windows....only waste 5 hours finding that out...its ahrder than you think keeping up with 4 or 5 HDDS......03/03/2015 - 4:44am

Matthew Wilson: I am going to pax east, any games you guys want me to check out?03/02/2015 - 11:23pm

ZippyDSMlee: No one remembers the days of Cinemagic and Cynergy eh? :P, meh even MGS is getting to film like....03/02/2015 - 8:44pm

MechaTama31: I was about to get all defensive about liking Metal Gear Solid, but then I saw that he was talking about "cinematic" as a euphemism for "crappy framerate".03/02/2015 - 8:29pm

prh99: Just replace cinematic with the appropriate synonym for poo and you'll have gist of any press release.03/02/2015 - 5:34pm

Monte: Though from a business side, i would agree with the article. While it would be smarter for developers to slow down, you can't expect EA, Activision or ubisoft to do something like that. Nintnedo's gotta get the third party back.02/28/2015 - 4:36pm

Monte: Though it does also help that nintendo's more colorful style is a lot less reliant on graphics than more realistic games. Wind Waker is over 10 years old and still looks good for its age.02/28/2015 - 4:33pm

Monte: With the Wii, nintnedo had the right idea. Hold back on shiny graphics and focus on the gameplay experience. Unfortunatly everyone else keeps pushing for newer graphics and it matters less and less each generation. I can barely notice the difference02/28/2015 - 4:29pm

Monte: ON third party developers; i kinda think they should slow down to nintendo's pace. They bemoan the rising costs of AAA gaming, but then constantly push for the best graphics which is makes up a lot of those costs. Be easier to afford if they held back02/28/2015 - 4:27pm

Matthew Wilson: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/28/the-world-is-nintendos-if-only-theyd-take-it/ I think this is a interesting op-ed, but yeah it kind of is stating the obvious.02/28/2015 - 2:52pm